Programming
Future of Broadcasting
is ..... the Internet??

1/6/10 Pandora, Pioneer Bring
Internet Radio To CarsThanks
to a partnership between Internet radio service Pandora
and electronics maker Pioneer, iPhone users will
soon be able to hear Pandora radio stations in their cars.
Starting in March, Pioneer will sell a navigation and
entertainment device that allows Pandora users who stream the
service on their iPhones to access Pandora in their cars, reports
the Wall Street Journal. The $1,200 navigation system,
announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas,
will detect iPhones and iPod touches that have Pandora installed
and put those Pandora settings on the navigation screen, allowing
drivers to easily hear their favorite channels.

Ted Cardenas, Director of Marketing for Pioneer, told
the WSJ that he saw the deal as an opportunity
to reach many of Pandora's 42 million users. "This gives us
the ability to talk to an entirely new group of consumers,"
he said in an interview. Meanwhile, Pandora executives hope the
technology will help expand the way people think of its
service. "Maybe a year ago people would have said Pandora is
a computer thing," said co-founder Tim Westergren.
Now, "they're beginning to realize that Internet radio is an
anytime, anywhere thing."

--- On Tue, 1/5/10, James W Anderson <genealogy248@yahoo.com>
wrote:

I had mentioned in some of the discussions about the changes in
the media industry, that Google was going to unveil a smartphone
that would be able to be used with any carrier. In other
words, you would buy the phone, then buy the wireless plan
separately, rather than have to buy a phone from a carrier and the
plan with it.

There's more to the story than just that. This story in the
NY Times tells more details. There will be more stories
today and blog posts, etc., about this as the day goes on.

In the end, the web server is going to be the new radio
'transmitter' and smartphones and wifi devices and other things
will be the new 'radios' of the future, we're already seeing it in
small ways. Forget about Grade A or Grade B coverage,
station coverage and listener footrints will be wherever one can
get a signal from a cell tower or wifi hotspot.

The
really big question isn't how to implement Internet radio into cars
and other places. That is already being done and will get
better as technology evolves.

The real question is how to make any money out of doing it.
Unless you are philanthropic, or simply have an agenda you wish to
distribute, most broadcasters will need to see a return on
investment. Even noncommercial broadcasters have expenses and
somebody has to pay for those.

I think we've been streaming for about five year or so. The income
from it has been hardly worth mentioning, even though we have a
reasonable on-line listenership. Your local sponsors aren't
going to be very impressed if somebody half way across the country
is listening. Those listeners are unlikely to patronize the
local merchant.

I'm not going to say that you can't generate income from web
streaming, but it is a very different proposition from the usual
LPFM model. I sometimes wonder why we bother. The only real
reason I can use to justify the expense is that some local listeners
really do tune in at work on their computers. I have no idea
how many that really is, but let's optimistically say it is 50% of
our on-line listeners. Divide that number into whatever your
total cost for streaming is per month, and you'll get a cost per
listener. Will your sponsors pay that much per listener to
justify the expense? I doubt it.

Of course, there are other reasons for doing it. I'm sure ego
and my own personal convenience enter into the equation for me, but
sometimes you have to realize that it is an expensive hobby.
Hopefully, it has some return in the future, although it may not be
a pay out in dollars and cents. Chuck Conrad, KZQX Radio

I think
we need to look at this question holistically rather than as a
series of separate pieces. It's not a problem of broadcast
spectrum going away, leaving mainstream broadcast with nowhere to
go. It's a matter of mainstream broadcasting abandoning its
"over the air" spectrum and going to other distribution
media. They are moving there because it's where their
audience is going. You have to remember that broadcasters
are in the advertising business, and they use the over-the-air
technology to reach the audience. They don't use it for its
own sake.

We're only talking about technology here. One-to-many
broadcasting is not an efficient use of spectrum. The
multiplexing techniques used in cell phones already demonstrate
how much more information you can pack into less spectrum using
more sophisticated modulation systems. Why not utilize it?

As the posts about Ford and iPhones have mentioned, alternate
distribution technology is already reaching cars. This
reminds me of when FM gained broad adoption. People didn't
stop putting AM radios in cars, they added FM too. Internet
to cars will be added o nto existing receivers, and then if all
the programming migrates from today's broadcast to new technology,
then it might actually make sense to redeploy the bandwidth
currently consumed by less efficient technology.

This is not going to happen tomorrow. Look at how long the
DTV transition took from announcement to deployment, and no
"aural service" transition has even been proposed, much
less adopted. More likely it will follow a market-driven
paradigm shift which will include wifi service as ubiquitous as
cell phone coverage, paid for by advertising content or some sort
of low-cost subscription fee such as the British TV license,
reaching devices like smartphones and laptops that people already
have. And if your license isn't good on your car radio, then
you'll be able to plug your wifi device into your car like you can
already plug in an iPod.

If I were going to worry about this, I'd worry about streaming
today and watch the technology evolve. Someone posted the
fact that most office workers don't have radios on their desktops
anymore, and that's true. It reminds me of a boarding school
radio station I helped build once, where the school administration
had discovered that it put a big load on their IT resources
because everyone listened to the stream rather than the broadcast
in their dorms. In the long run, we will all probably be
able to retire our transmitters, free ourselves of the FCC rules
and restrictions, sell advertising and reach more people. My two cents. Your mileage may vary.

Question: where can I learn more
about FCC obscenity regulations and what should a station do to
prevent independent program producers from violating these rules?Nick Ring, LPFM Operator

Answer: Go to the FCC website covering these rules. Review
pre-produced programs before accepting them. Only allowed
people you trust to air live. Don't air call-in conversations
from the public without a "seven-second tape delay
system." One vulgar word by a malicious caller could
create very serious problems for you.

Question: Can two differently licensed local LPFM's simulucast the same "locally originated" programming
24/7? Can they air dual IDs? Randy Bennett, WCEE-LP,
Melbourne, FLAnswer: There are no rules against an LPFM relaying another LPFM station
but not full power broadcast stations, domestic or foreign, and not
TV audio either. Dual IDs should not be an issue during the time the stations are
simulcasting. See §73.879] Rich Eyre, RECNET.com

Question: Can a LPFM enter into an agreement to
share local programming since various LPFM stations affiliate with
same Christian satellite network? Randy Bennett, WCEE-LP,
Melbourne, FL

Answer: "No LPFM licensee may enter into an operating agreement of any type, including a time brokerage or management agreement, with either a full power broadcast station or another LPFM station."
See §73.860(c) Rich Eyre, RECNET.com

Answer: There is an important difference
between (1) affiliating with a satellite or internet which network
is legal, and (2) entering into an LMA (local management agreement)
with another broadcaster. In the first case total control is
being maintained by the LPFM licensee and in the second case this
authority is being delegated to someone else.John Broomall, CCB

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